How Can We Keep Animals Healthy?

Animal health concerns us all. We all understand how outbreaks of human disease can spread across the world. Perhaps less appreciated is the global spread of animal disease to farm stock. Bovine tuberculosis (TB) is a major concern in some countries. QIAGEN is committed to facilitating research to better contain bovine TB.

Outbreaks of bovine TB are familiar news headlines in some countries. The spread of this slow-progressing respiratory disease across multiple species is alarming and largely underappreciated by many uninvolved in animal husbandry. To provide even a degree of disease management, programs for screening and slaughter prior to overt clinical signs are considered necessary, but slaughter of livestock has tremendous financial consequences and culling of wild carriers, such as badgers and possums, has emotive opposition.

QIAGEN is investigating development of veterinary-optimized kits and workflows for bovine TB to better assist academic veterinary researchers. More rapid detection of bovine TB could allow better containment of potential disease outbreaks and possibly save healthy animals. Interestingly, the forerunner of the human QFT kit was first developed for easier screening of cattle, so this marks a return to optimize a veterinary product with cross-talk from our human diagnostic experience.